The Monstrosity that is Me
by SandySunday
Summary: James Sirius Potter - the son of The Chosen One, The Boy Who Lived, The Man Who Made Life 'Safe' for Wizard-kind. What could possibly be wrong with his life? Answer: Everything.   This is my first attempt at a real chaptered fic. Please R&R!
1. Prologue

**_Soooo...First real attempt at a real chapter fic. Anyway. I've been writing this in my mind for like, ever, but haven't actually gotten anything on paper. We shall see how this goes._**

_**Reviews give me confidence (and incentive) to update faster.**_

_**As always, I don't own HP or anything related to it. If I did, would I seriously be writing this?**_

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...

_My name is James Sirius Potter. I am 22 years old, and I've already ruined my life._

...

I am writing this from my room in St. Mungo's. I have been here two weeks, three days, and 17 hours. I am considered a threat to myself and others.

As part of my recovery, Healer Swan suggested that I write down everything that brought me to this point. I don't know why, but its something to do.


	2. Valencia

**_So, here we go. Please review and let me know what you think! Thanks!_**

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I'll start when I was happiest, because maybe if I hadn't been so happy, I wouldn't have fallen so far.

At Hogwarts, I was the guy that every girl wanted. And I'll admit it, I liked it that way. I'd date a girl for a month or so, get tired of her, and have another one waiting for me. But I was never interested in a relationship.

When I moved to London, I met Valencia Rossi. It was like nothing I had ever known. For the first time ever, I was in love.

Life was wonderful until we hit a snag - Val was pregnant.

We were young, but we decided to get married anyway. It was the only thing to do.

Even though we were pressured in to getting married (thanks, Mum), we were young and in love; We were ecstatic. Nothing in the world could go wrong for us.


	3. Catherine

**_Is anyone actually reading this? What do you think? Should I stop while I'm ahead, or keep going...?_**

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If we had been smarter, we would have noticed things happening around us. Nothing really unusual - that is, more unusual than always - but things that we should have payed attention to nonetheless. Disappearances increasing in frequency. Disturbances around the country. But we were too absorbed in ourselves.

I had my reservations about fatherhood. In truth, I really didn't want a baby. I was perfectly happy with life, just me and Val. We were happy just as we were, nothing needed to change.

...

We named her Catherine.

From day one, she had me wrapped around her finger. I was just as bad as the men that Seamus and I used to make fun of in Diagon Alley. Life was perfect. No one could be happier than we were, and nothing could make our life better.


	4. Fatherhood

_**I've had some people comment on the length of the chapters. I'm keeping them short, because these are supposed to be almost like journal entries - James is writing about everything that brought him to where he is now. **_

_**Comments keep me writing! Thank you! **_

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Catherine was my world. I loved being able to look at her and say, "She's _mine_; We _made_ her." I was fascinated by everything that she did. The way that this little creature would reach out and grab things. How she always giggled when we played with her toes. I wanted to hold on to Baby Catherine for as long as I could but, she seemed to grow every day.

So when Valencia told me, right after Catherine's first birthday, that she was pregnant again, I was thrilled.

Things in the real world were getting darker, but we were trapped in our own fantasy-land where all that mattered were Catherine's tiny accomplishments and baby names for the next one. In the end, we decided on Maggie, for a girl, or Thomas, if it was a boy.

We were so caught up in everything. Would it be a boy, or a girl? What would Catherine think? Who will it look more like?

We should have been paying attention to more important things: disappearances, riots, shops being torched... After all, that wasn't hurting us...


	5. Blindsided

It wasn't unusual for me to wake in the middle of the night and realize that Val wasn't in bed next to me; the baby made it hard for her to sleep, and she often went to look in on Catherine. I loved to peek in on them like that - my little family.

The night of May 2 didn't seem any different. A strange sound woke me. I was alone in the bedroom, so I assumed that it was simply Val in the other room. Still, I got up, just to check on things. I was just getting out of bed when I heard a loud noise in the nursery. Something was definitely wrong. By the time I got there, all I could see was a man in a hood disapparating with my wife and my baby.

Somehow they had gotten through our wards, broken our anti-apparition spells, and hit me where it hurt the most.

...

Something like that wouldn't have been easy. This was planned, intentional. We had been targeted. I had been targeted. But why? I knew almost immediately - my father. It wasn't the first time that 'the bad guys' had tried to hurt our family, but this? This was low. Kidnapping a pregnant woman and a toddler? Who would do this?

...

For as long as I can remember, there have been people who hated my father for what he did in his youth. They go by many names - 'The Black Circle,' 'The Inheritors,' 'The True Ones,' even, ironically 'The Chosen Ones' - but they are really just the remnants and descendants of the Death Eaters from the Second War. In the past few years, they've grown bolder. Gaining publicity, and through that, power. I hadn't realized how brash they had gotten, nor how much they hated my father.

No one else would have done this. No one else **could** have done this. They were responsible.

...

My father (being who he is) was able to mobilize Magical Defense within half an hour of the attack. But where to begin? No one knew the identity of the kidnapper. No one knew where they had taken Val and Catherine. For all we knew, they could already (Godric forbid) be dead.

The search went on for weeks.

I was completely beside myself. We had no leads. No clues. No hope.

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_A/N: Hey y'all - sorry it's been so long (almost 18 months!). I kept telling myself that I would write more when life started to calm down a bit, but life (as life has a tendency to do) has done nothing but get more crazy. However, I have once again discovered the therapeutic qualities of writing, and will (hopefully) be writing more in the coming days/weeks. Also, if you wish, you can find me on tumblr at balanchina[dot]tumblr[dot]com. Thanks again for sticking with m_


	6. Darkness

My best mate (Catherine's godfather), Seamus, led one of the auror teams.

He was the one that found them.

It was June 6. Exactly five weeks after the attack. They were being held in a drafty shack (if you could even call it that) in Lancashire. There were three captors, but none were captured - one managed to escape, one was (not so) regrettably killed at the scene, and one was taken into custody, but killed himself before we were able to get any information out of him. The aurors learned nothing new about this radical and dangerous organization. In their eyes, we were back to square one.

Valencia was still alive, though in bad shape. Catherine...wasn't. They said that Val was still clinging to her, convinced that her daughter was just sleeping; the aurors had to immobilize her to retrieve the body. Healers guessed that she died just hours before the rescue. If only they could have gotten there bit sooner...

Val stayed in Mungo's for a week. She understood that she had lost the baby, but she just couldn't accept that Catherine was gone, too. Things were bad - her body was healing, but this wasn't my Val. This couldn't be. Her spark was gone; The optimism and determination that were so key to her character - obliterated. A combination of grief, denial, and guilt consumed her.

I, too, was in shock. My baby girl would never grow up. Would never go to Hogwarts. Would never get married. Would never live the life that we had dreamed for her. But at least I still had Valencia. Together, we could get through this.

One thought kept me going: Things could only get better; there was no way they could get any worse.

I was wrong.

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_NOTE! - I am not in any way associated with Warner Bros or JKR. The only profit I get from this takes the form of feedback and stress-relief!_


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